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This tutorial will explain how to Upgrade Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibix) released on the 30th of October 2008.

By default Ubuntu 8.04 LTS will not offer a upgrade to 8.10. This is because the 8.04 LTS version is a long term support release and 8.10 is a regular release. Upgrades from 8.04 LTS to 8.10 are fully supported, of course, and easy to enable.If you want to know what is new in Ubuntu 8.10 check here

You can directly upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

The upgrade will not be presented by default because 8.10 is not a Long Term Support (LTS) release.

Be sure that you have all updates applied to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS before you upgrade.

I have been using Ubuntu since Ubuntu 5.04 was released and have never had an upgrade work. I don’t install anything outside of the official repos and I use the recommended upgrade methods. The last upgrade (Hardy to Intrepid) left me with a mostly unusable system – APT and xorg would no longer work.

Ubuntu is one of the best distros on the planet, in my opinion, but the safest way to upgrade to the next release is to do a fresh install from the latest livecd because there is no way of knowing which system will survive any other way of upgrading. I’ve seen far too many people in the irc channel having problems with the recommended upgrade methods.

I just upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 from Ubuntu 8.04, my upgrade process is pretty much the same as above. But after it remove the obsolete package and try to restart, all I see is the Ubuntu default loading page, then turns to a command screen and stuck there
The screen which says:
*Starting anac(h)ronistic cron anacron
*Starting deferred execution scheduler atd
*Starting periodic command scheduler xxxx
*Starting battery state….
*Running Local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local)

I tried to reboot and went into the “ESC” screen to pick the recovery mode…but the screen only shows the 8.04 build, and I only been using Ubuntu for a few months…not too sure how to use command to fix this. Anyone can give me some advice on how to repair this problem??

It looks that something goes wrong when upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 from update manager so many packages are not upgraded. So the system has not all packages upgraded which leads to a problem with xOrg.

Beside this I noticed that some programs just disappeared so I had to Add again firefox, thunderbird, Ooo … and more important: Network manager.The option “delete obsolete packages” on the upgrading could be part of the problem, so if you are still in time, I think it is a good idea not to delete them…

I encountered the same problem as Ken’s and I tried doing the suggestion above but the network is still not working. It says that the action is not permitted. I really need help because I didn’t backed-up my files and just used update manager.

Folks, I also had issues with the updgrade; I didn’t write down the error message, but at the time it didn’t seem like something very critical.

I tried PerePipirimosca’s solution and it seems to have worked fine. Yan: try “sudo dhclient eth0” – it won’t work without executing as superuser.

When executing the “sudo apt-get upgrade”, I did come up with an error at – I believe – the end: while “processing triggers for libc6”, “dpkg: status database area is locked by another process” –> “Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)”.

During the final step, the process queries wether one wishes to use the config (?) files as specified by the package admin or leave them as they are. I chose to replace them with the standard config.

The system came up, no keyboard / mouse action. I halted (power button) and restarted. The system came up (took a while) and indicated that “the configuration defaults for GNOME Power Manager have not been installled correctly”…

While my install of Notes 8 still worked, I had no LAN connection anymore, it didn’t even recognize eth0 as a device.

I’ve decided to do a complete reinstall; annoying, as the Notes installation is a pain, but I’m afraid that there are several things broken and it will be more work to fix them than to reinstall Notes…

I have used update with varying levels of success in the past, including having to resort to apt-get dist-upgrade.

I strongly recommend that, if you are wanting to live on the bleeding edge, put your /home directory in its own partition. Then, if/when things go pear-shaped and you have to reinstall, you don’t format that partition. Create yourself as user exactly the same as you had it before, and you _should_ have access to your home as before. You may have to edit /etc/fstab to agree with this configuration.

In the past I have downloaded and burned the CD, then added it to my repo list (apt-cdrom), then done the upgrade. Advantages: you now have a CD for installation on other machines; if things go wrong, you can do a clean install (providing you backed up your home or kept in on a different partition), and you save on bandwidth for future installs by downloading only once.

To update from Alternate CD: (or rescue your system when things go wrong)

Open terminal, or better: close XWindows and work at the terminal.
$ sudo apt-cdrom add
$
$ sudo -p cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list_backup
$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
(This opens your sources list in vi. Place a # at the beginning of every
line except the one describing your new CD, which should be top of the list.)
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
(You may have to repeat the process a couple of times, if things go wrong – i.e. if you get an error message and an unexpected quit.)
The upgrade process should upgrade your sources.list to include the main repositories, with the “extra” ones commented out.
You will probably have to reinstall your restricted drivers.

I did the above upgrade over the weekend and the main problem was the MYSQL database upgrades which were required.
This caused issues with roundcube (database could not be upgraded), WordPress database could not be upgraded (still works but needs DB upgrade)and Gallery2 has broken with a similar DB issue.

I am a little worried that the DB issue may cause corruption of some of the Gallery or WordPress DB’s.

The other problem I have seen is sound.
Previously I ran 2 sound cards (one on board and a Sound Blaster)in my AMD x64 server, now the systems says it cannot find a device. I’m assuming this is a driver thing, but this was a little disappointing as I use the server for some Ham Radio VoIP technologies and the sound cards are required for this to work.

Just did this following the tutorial (thanks for that) and only two small issues. I had to install Awn and for some crazy reason the mount points on two disks got reversed. Both were easily fixed and I was rocking within the hour. Usually I do a clean install but this was a great time saver.

I have upgraded via the upgrade manager all the way back to 5.10, but no upgrade has been as buggy as this one. Webcam does not work (complicated workaround was found). Crashes NVidia drivers leaving the system unusable. All in all, I went back to 8.04 & I will stay there, thank you.

I just upgraded from 8.04lts to 8.10 and everything looks good but now my online games wont play like urban terror, it gets to awaiting gamestate screen and just sits there, and my XQF game browser now cant get info on servers, im using comcast cable ethernet.

For those having problems with upgrading, I recommend doing a clean install. I also recommend putting /home on a different partition, as it will set you up nicely for future upgrades/reinstalls. Also, all-in-all, Intrepid was worse than Hardy, and I would not recommend upgrading at all.

Hello, I have a problem. My system has always updated automatically. I currently have Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 in Spanish, and I was waiting to the next release. Today, being Feburary the first, 2009, my system is “Up to date”, according to Synaptic and Upgrade manager. Should I perform a manual update? Why I didn’t receive the upgrade notification this time?

SnT:
I had the same problem recently with arch linux. If I connect my ethernet via dhcp with my router encore Urban Terror or other games like Enemy Territory don’t work. But if I connect my wireless all games work perfectly. Then I changed my ethernet configuration setting manualy the ip and dns. (look the /etc/rc.conf Put in there OpenDNS or the DNS of your ISP.)
I don’t know why, but now all the games works fine with this stupid change. Sorry about my terrorific english.